


The Light Between Days

by Nimori



Category: Prince of Tennis
Genre: M/M, Threesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-10
Updated: 2010-01-10
Packaged: 2017-10-06 02:59:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nimori/pseuds/Nimori
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tezuka struggles to balance his roles as kouhai and captain amidst the awkward discovery that he is a teenage boy after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Light Between Days

**Author's Note:**

  * For [konkon_pinku](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=konkon_pinku).



> Written for konkon_pinku for Triopuri. Thank you Nerf and Anj.

Spring.

The air smells like fresh beginnings, like goodbyes and hellos and possibility. The high school courts are newer and there are more of them, dotted with sakura blossoms that the freshmen will have to sweep again before the ranking matches begin. Tezuka stands between Oishi and Fuji on E court, feeling the low throb of excitement and a strange nervous thrill he didn't expect and doesn't understand. First years don't get jerseys, not even the plain blue ones, and he feels naked in his gym shorts and t-shirt, like he's forgotten to wear pants -- or worse, his glasses. His arms want to fold across his chest; he makes them hang at his side.

Yamato is the same as ever but somehow it's all changed anyway. Tezuka is taller, stronger, and as Yamato approaches down the line of freshmen he fights the urge to hunch his shoulders, to recreate that distance. It's wrong to look down to meet his captain's eyes.

Yamato stops in front of them. "Tezuka, block B. Fuji, Oishi, block D."

"Buchou," Tezuka says, and it's fierce and loaded the way Echizen sometimes says it to him. An effect of this strange tradition of Seigaku's pillars he thinks until Fuji shoots him a curious glance. Oishi doesn't take his eyes off Yamato, who smiles lazily.

"I'd tell you to do your best, but it's silly to tell the sun to please rise in the east." Yamato is looking at Oishi over the round rims of his glasses but it's Tezuka's arm he touches.

They hold the ranking matches and Tezuka takes a spot and so does Fuji and no one is surprised.

* * *

Eiji drags them to Kawamura Sushi to celebrate. Taka looks wistful and Tezuka worries they have been inconsiderate, but Taka's congratulations are sincere and his sushi is improved. Despite the noise they are making the restaurant feels strangely empty; the second and third years have gone to their own celebration and there is no Momoshiro to fight with Eiji over the last piece of eel, no Kaidoh hissing at him to be quiet, no Echizen patiently bearing his senpais' lunacy and shooting Tezuka undecipherable looks from under the brim of his cap. Even their cheering section is gone, and with a start Tezuka realizes Oishi, Eiji, and Inui _are_ the cheering section now.

He eats his shime-saba, and tries to keep from checking his cell phone. He's not sure whose number he wants to see calling him.

* * *

Yoshida still belongs to the tennis club.

They skirt around each other at practice. Tezuka does not deliberately avoid him, but he said everything he had to say to Yoshida three years ago. _Tennis is not a weapon._

He doesn't hold back in practice. The first years in the senior division have more experience, greater talent, and most teams have one or two freshmen regulars. Tezuka is too tall now, has too much of a reputation to encounter as much trouble as he did in junior high, but that doesn't mean his new (old) teammates like him.

He misses Oishi fiercely, even though Oishi is only one court away during practice, even though they share classes, even though they attend the same cram school. He misses his _team_, and the worst of it strikes him around the same time as he realizes his Adam's apple is huge, and he goes around for two weeks believing everyone is staring at it. After that he is all joints and his feet are too big and he wishes he could go back to not caring.

He's Tezuka though, so no one notices his funk except Fuji, who's too polite to comment, and Yamato, who for reasons Tezuka cannot fathom signs him up for beginners gymnastics. It succeeds in distracting him though, and by the end of it Tezuka can do a double back salto and stick most of his dismounts from the high bar, and he feels more comfortable in his own skin.

Somewhere between learning tucks and seat drops on the trampoline, his body begins to tighten whenever Yamato walks by. He thinks there is something wrong with him and runs extra laps to derail the feeling, but it doesn't work. Every time he looks up Yamato is watching him.

* * *

He returns to the junior high courts just once, and Oishi is already there. Mediating, Tezuka thinks at first, but no, Kaidoh has brought Oishi in to help Katsuo and Kachiro with their doubles formation. Tezuka leans against a tree on the far side of the courts to watch, hidden in plain sight.

He can see at once that the combination won't work out, both of them net players with similar styles, neither willing to take the lead and be the game-maker. _Switch either of them with Horio,_ Tezuka thinks a moment before Oishi does just that. Horio is loud and boastful but his dedication to the team is unflagging, and more importantly neither Kastuo nor Kachiro would hesitate to step up and control the game with him.

Oishi runs Katsuo and Horio through some formations as Echizen yawns his way through an exercise with Arai and pretends not to watch. When the trial doubles match with Ikeda and Hayashi has reached the fourth game (Katsuo and Horio are losing 0-3 but the last game was close), Echizen corners Oishi and drags him off for a match on D court. Tezuka watches from the far side of the courts and mentally arranges the lineup. Echizen, Momoshiro, Arai; singles one, two and three. Kaidoh-Ikeda, doubles one, Katsuo-Horio, doubles two. Kachiro on reserve if he increases his stamina, Hayashi if he doesn't. No one notices Tezuka; he's in the shade and the day is bright and the regionals are rushing towards them. He leaves before Echizen wins.

Later Oishi tells him Kaidoh threatened to make Echizen vice-captain, and the strategy is keeping both Momoshiro and Echizen in check (one because he wants to be vice-captain, the other because he doesn't).

"Momo and Kaidoh are getting along much better," Oishi says as they open their physics textbooks. "Only three fights while I was there, and for two of those they stepped off the courts and didn't raise their voices. Not much, anyway." He pauses, while Tezuka finds the list of questions they're to answer. "You should go watch them sometime."

There's something underneath the words, maybe a 'they miss you' or a 'you miss them' or something even more foolishly sentimental.

"Aa," Tezuka says, not sure what he's answering, and then asks Oishi about vectors he already understands.

* * *

"Buchou," he says one day in the club room after practice. He means to stop there, but the rest of the words escape, a ritual he knows too well. "Play a match with me."

Yamato finishes packing his bag and stands up. "Wouldn't you rather get some food?"

"A match," Tezuka says, more firmly.

"A movie then," Yamato counters, and Tezuka knows he is being teased now and holds his ground. "You'll be bored," Yamato says.

_Not possible_, Tezuka thinks.

They play on the courts under the trains, away from lingering freshmen and the handful of players who always wander over from the girls' side after practice. Yamato is good but Tezuka is much better. Tezuka wins every game, but it is Yamato who taught him there is more to life than tennis. There is more to _tennis_ than tennis. Neither of them mind the score. Tezuka is learning.

Afterwards they board the bus, sweaty and tired, and talk quietly in the air conditioning and forget their stops until their fourth circuit when the driver throws them off. Tezuka doesn't know where they are but Yamato does and takes him for ramen and then takes him home.

* * *

On Monday, Yamato matches Tezuka against Yoshida.

"Saa, Tezuka," is all Yoshida says before they play, and he looks relieved when Tezuka wins easily. They shake hands over the net, and Tezuka thinks maybe the rest of the team does not dislike him as much as he thought. Maybe they never did.

The next time their senpais go out to celebrate, Tezuka and Fuji go with them.

* * *

Summer creeps in, bringing tournaments and unbearable heat. Junior and senior matches in the Kantou tournament are staggered because they use the same courts; Tezuka goes to check out the conditions, and ends up staying to watch. He should be training for the senior tournament. Instead he attends all of Seigaku's matches.

They struggle at first, most of their raw talent having moved up to the senior division, and Yamabuki almost takes them down in the second round. Kaidoh has paired Horio with the more outspoken Kachiro and they scrape a win. Horio is nearly unbearable after, and Tezuka almost smiles when Kachiro shouts, "Be more modest!" at the top of his lungs and then turns pink at the attention it draws.

Kaidoh and Ikeda do well but cannot overcome Yamabuki's stronger doubles one pair. Arai pulls out an impressive backhand smash he must have worked all winter on, and then lets his opponent goad him into reckless anger. Momoshiro defeats Dan Taichi, though not by as large a margin as Tezuka expected, and Echizen demolishes Yamabuki's captain. 7-5, 4-6, 4-6, 6-3, 6-1.

Tezuka sits in the last row and leaves right after Echizen's match. He knows Echizen has seen him, and is both relieved and disappointed that they don't speak.

* * *

"You should bring him along sometime," Yamato says casually as they warm up to the rattle of the trains passing overhead, and Tezuka doesn't ask who he means. He spends three days wondering if it had been an order or an offhand remark. On the fourth day he realizes that with Yamato they're the same thing.

* * *

Seigaku advances in both divisions. In the week before the regionals start, Echizen turns up at Tezuka's house, taller and grumpier and carrying his racket bag, and Tezuka's mother lets him in and serves him tea while Tezuka is in the shower.

"Are the ranking matches finished?" Tezuka asks when he comes downstairs. His hair is damp against his collar.

"Aa. I beat Kaidoh-senpai."

"I see," Tezuka says. Echizen doesn't call Kaidoh captain, and Tezuka knows he should find this disappointing and immature but he doesn't.

"You haven't been to see us practice in a while."

"I've been busy." It's a convenient truth. His schedule would be less busy if he didn't try so hard to fill it.

"I could come to the high school," Echizen says, too casually, and Tezuka doesn't answer. He feels terribly selfish, terribly martyred, like he is punishing them both for an offense he can't remember. "Buchou, play a match with me."

He glances at his watch, even though he knows what time it is, that he should have already left, that Yamato will be waiting. "I have plans."

Echizen doesn't reply, but stares at Tezuka until he has to go or he'll miss the second bus, which would make him unforgivably late. He walks Echizen to the door, but when he grabs his racket bag Echizen's eyes glitter and Tezuka knows he's in trouble.

He's right. Echizen skulks along behind him to the bus stop, far enough back that they're not really walking together. He sits four seats away and looks out the window the whole time, but he gets off when Tezuka does. If he's surprised at their destination, or to see Yamato waiting under the trains, he doesn't show it.

"Echizen-kun," Yamato says warmly, and Echizen climbs to the umpire's chair and tugs his cap down.

"Buchou... buchou."

It takes Tezuka a moment to realize he's talking to both of them, and another to realize they're waiting on him, that he doesn't have his racket out. He crouches to hide his face while he unzips his bag, and he takes too long rummaging around inside.

"We can do something else if you don't want to play," Yamato says. "I said I would take you on a proper date to a movie."

There's a soft 'che' from the chair, and Tezuka straightens, racket dangling from his fingertips.

"Which?"

"Smooth."

It's rough, and Tezuka serves, fast and deliberate. He plays his best because it's ingrained, but he doesn't play _well_ because he can feel Echizen's gaze and it isn't always on him. He wins anyway, 6-4.

"Thank you for the game." Tezuka bows.

"For a captain you're not very good," Echizen says from the tower.

"No," Yamato agrees readily enough. "Why don't you two play?"

Echizen is off the chair before he's finished speaking, and has his racket out before Tezuka can organize a protest. He doesn't want to play Echizen in front of Yamato. It's too intimate, too... too much how he wants his games with Yamato to be.

He gives the match his best anyway, because he can't do less, because Echizen would be angry if he didn't, because part of him wants to show Yamato the full reach and breadth of his tennis and he can only do that against a player of his own caliber.

Yamato is not paying attention; or rather he is but not to the tennis, and Tezuka hits a smash when he doesn't need to and then feels childish.

"_Buchou._" Echizen is exasperated and not hiding it. They're at tiebreak, 15-14, Echizen's favour.

Tezuka wants to apologize, though he's not sure why. Instead he puts away his racket and takes a long drink from his water bottle, uncomfortably aware of his Adam's apple again. They're not looking at it. They're not looking at him at all, and he wonders where all these complicated angers and irrationalities came from. He thinks it might be a hormone thing and wishes he hadn't been thinking of tournament lineups in health class.

Yamato sighs. "We should have gone for ramen. Tennis makes everything complicated with you two."

"Tennis is the easy part," Echizen mutters and zips up his racket bag. "Did you really ask Buchou out on a date?"

They reply at the same time with: "He asked me," and: "It wasn't a date."

Tezuka busies himself with his own bag so he doesn't have to see the speculation whirling around Echizen's head like a tangible thing. Echizen is dangerous when he's thinking.

He's missed the bus he'd planned to take home, and his homework is sitting on his desk, patiently awaiting his attention. Echizen slips a hot sweaty hand into his before he can walk to the bus stop and he's not startled but he does shoot an oblique glance at Yamato. Yamato is not looking at them. His face is tilted to the wind. His eyes are closed.

"The breeze is nice today. Let's go for a walk."

They head down to the water and Echizen has bogarted Tezuka's hand and shows no sign of returning it. Tezuka thinks _I am walking down the street, holding hands with my kouhai,_ and doesn't know what to do. The idea of it makes his stomach tighten in a not-unpleasant way, but in reality Echizen's hand is sweaty and a frayed band-aid circles his index finger, edges curling up and rubbing the last vestiges of glue off on Tezuka's skin. In reality he doesn't know what Echizen means by the gesture or what Yamato thinks, and both are more important to him than they should be.

His breath catches when Yamato drapes an arm over his shoulders, and Echizen's grip tightens until Yamato steals Echizen's cap and puts it on Tezuka's head.

"Buchou," Tezuka says, and feels Echizen startle and then exhale slowly. His grip loosens a little, and without his cap Tezuka can see him watching Yamato from the corner of his eye. That look is back, the one Echizen gets when confronted with a new move, the look that says he is dissecting, analysing, reverse engineering a counter.

* * *

He can see two figures by the water, and they might be Inui and Kaidoh and they might not be; Yamato turns in the other direction. The sun is low and everything is painted in liquid gold. They stand by the canal and Tezuka lifts his face to the molten light.

"I hate this time of day," Yamato says, voice mild and eyes far away. "When we're suspended, caught between two extremes, and it feels like it will never end." Yamato laughs softly. "Really, it's only a moment. I should savour it, I suppose. Too impatient."

"Che," says Echizen. "It's only sunset. You're weird, Yamato-buchou."

"I suppose." As if to prove it, Yamato turns to Tezuka and kisses him. Tezuka freezes, hyperaware of Yamato's body and his lips and Echizen's warm palm against his own.

"Che," Echizen says when they break apart. He's laced their fingers together and his jaw is set. Tezuka feels his face heat and looks away in case he's blushing but there's nowhere to look; they have him surrounded. Yamato only laughs again, a gentle chuckle, and spreads his jersey on the grass and sits on it.

"Your captain is always so collected," Yamato says to Echizen. "It's nice to see some things can move him."

"I'm not captain anymore," Tezuka says, and knows it's not true. He's _Echizen's_ captain, if only because Echizen says so.

Echizen is looking uncertain now, chewing his lip in a rare display of his age. "Buchou," he says at last in a voice that makes it a decision, and he looks at Yamato as though seeking permission but Yamato only stretches and lays back on the bank, leaving Tezuka to Echizen's mercy. Echizen, Tezuka knows, doesn't have any.

"Buchou," Echizen says again, very seriously, and leans in.

It's utter disaster. Noses mash, teeth click, Tezuka's glasses dig into Echizen's cheek, until one thought sweeps away all others: this is probably Echizen's first kiss, and Tezuka is botching it. He catches Echizen's face with both hands to better control the angle (idly wondering if he can make the zone work with his lips and tongue) and shows Echizen that kissing is a gentle lob, not a dunk smash. Echizen is not as swift at learning this as he is at learning new tennis moves, and Tezuka doesn't mind; he'd take tennis over kissing too. Maybe they both need more practice. Echizen tastes like tea and smells like Ponta.

They break apart, and Echizen finally lets go of Tezuka's hand in order to touch his own lips. The curled-up edge of band-aid sticks enough to tug the skin, and Tezuka wonders what it feels like, what Echizen is thinking when his eyes are so far away.

"It's so very odd," Yamato says, drawing both of them back to earth, back to him. "I didn't think I would feel jealous."

Echizen smirks, gaze sharpened and back to earth. "Mada mada dane, Yamato-buchou." He sits down beside Yamato, knees pressed together and hands clasped over them. He's looking at Tezuka with expectation in his eyes and Tezuka thinks it would be dangerous to sit with them.

He does a handspring on the grass instead, practicing because Yamato thought it was a skill Tezuka needed and also a little because Echizen seems impressed. Or as close to impressed as Echizen ever gets. He watches Tezuka intently from under his cap, and doesn't even object when Yamato steals it again and places it on his own head. Tezuka does a backflip. He can't imagine using this on the court like Eiji does, but he knows where the ground is now, always.

There is more to tennis than tennis.

* * *

After Echizen gets off the bus Yamato asks to borrow Tezuka's phone, and then he pulls out his own and holds them both up while he copies Echizen's number.

* * *

They play on the courts under the train.

"Buchou is weird," Echizen announces after Tezuka has won the first set, and for a moment Tezuka thinks Echizen is talking about him. Then understanding rushes in, collides with a dark uncomfortable feeling. He grips his water bottle too tightly and dents it.

"Not weird like Fuji-senpai," Echizen continues. He's bouncing the ball off his racket, alternating which side he hits with. "Fuji-senpai just likes to annoy everyone. Buchou is... He's more..."

Yamato _wants_ is what Echizen is trying to say. Fuji's laissez-faire runs soul-deep; Yamato's covers an intensity that equals Echizen's. That equals Tezuka's.

"He called me and all he wanted to talk about was you. I hung up on him." Echizen scratches his neck and pitches his empty Ponta can at the trash. He misses.

When they've finished (four sets because Echizen insisted) Tezuka fishes the can from the corner where the wind has blown it and throws it away.

_He called me to talk about you._

* * *

Everyone around him is happy. They talk and laugh through warm-ups and practice swings. Eiji throws the balls he collects at Oishi instead of the basket. Inui has a new headset and is dictating data to leave his hands free and whenever their paths cross Fuji teases him by pretending to listen in. The regulars run laps while the freshmen are clearing the courts.

Yamato is washing his face when Tezuka stops to refill his water bottle. "Buchou... about Echizen."

"Hmm." Yamato shakes his hair, and droplets fly out, winking in the sun. "When I was little my family went to Nagatoro one summer, and while I was wandering the hills I found a raspberry bush. They weren't ripe yet, but I knew if I waited they'd be the sweetest berries I ever tasted. Finally the day came that I thought they'd be ready, but when I got there a boy who was staying on the other side had already picked them."

"Let me guess." Tezuka folds his arms over his chest, aware that he is sulking and unhappy about it. "You shared the berries and had a wonderful time. Was this boy perhaps from America?"

"Actually, he was from Kansai and I pushed him down the hill." Yamato raises his brows at Tezuka's look. "I was six, Tezuka-kun. We had a nice fist fight, and _then_ we shared the berries and had a wonderful time."

"The berries might have wanted a say in who ate them," Tezuka says. His mouth is dry.

"If the berries had their way they'd have rotted off the bush for their seeds to be scattered by birds." Yamato smiles, echoes of Fuji. "And if the berries had their way my friend and I would never have met." He leans in close and lowers his voice. "Don't make me push Echizen down a hill, Tezuka-kun."

Tezuka goes back to his laps thinking about that. _Does_ he want to keep Yamato and Echizen apart? He's uncomfortable when they're all together, but he's just as uncomfortable alone with either one, and the idea of them together without him is unthinkable.

He has a sudden nightmare vision of them pooling their information on him, huddled together over Inui-style notebooks. It's frightening, partly because they might succeed in unraveling him, and Tezuka knows they'll both be disappointed at the pedestrian and somewhat dorky teenage boy they find underneath. It's also frightening for the hot vicious anger that races through his blood.

They're separate parts of his life. They aren't allowed to meet without him in the middle.

And _that_ thought makes him blush through the rest of practice and all the way home.

* * *

Yamato is a strategist, on and off the courts. He wins not with stamina or technical proficiency but by a series of openings calculated to draw his opponent down a particular path. His tennis has more in common with a game of go. He's a master at pseudo-ingenuousness, and a master at making everyone forget it.

That's why he's buchou.

* * *

After practice, Yamato invites Tezuka to Echizen's house for dinner, and it isn't until they are a block away that Tezuka realizes the invitation is probably not an extension of one Echizen gave Yamato. He pulls out his cell phone and dials.

Echizen answers at once. "Buchou?"

"Please tell your mother to expect two guests for dinner."

There is a sharp silence, and then Echizen says, "Yes, buchou," and hangs up.

Yamato drapes an arm over Tezuka's shoulders. "I've always wanted to meet Echizen-san."

Tezuka doesn't answer. He has seen Echizen's father lurking around tournaments like a caricature of a pedophile and of course Tezuka devoured everything about the man's career back in grade school, but Echizen's own reluctance to introduce -- or even acknowledge -- Echizen Nanjiroh has tempered Tezuka's curiosity. Momoshiro's outrageous stories about his visits to the Echizen residence did in the rest. Tezuka hopes, for Echizen's sake, that the mother at least is sane.

Echizen answers the door, out of breath and scowling. He has a squirming cat under one arm and someone is bellowing from the back of the house.

"Please come in," Echizen says politely as the cat flails, nails catching in Echizen's polo shirt. The noise draws closer and the cat breaks free and pelts up the stairs, chased by a man in monks' robes.

Echizen introduces Tezuka and Yamato to him mother and cousin, and snubs his father when he finally wanders into the kitchen. Echizen Nanjiroh has a scratch on his nose and a sulky expression, but he brightens the moment he sees them.

"That young man is always telling me I'm too embarrassing for him to invite friends over -- as if _I'm_ to blame for _his_ antisocial attitude."

"You are," Echizen mumbles.

Nanjiroh ignores this and leans on the counter next to Tezuka. "You're not the pointy-haired kid." Nanjiroh steals a prawn from the hot pot, and the cousin smacks his hand with a spoon. "And you're not the bouncy kid either, or the loudmouth or the dork. So you must be the captain Ryoma's always mooning over."

"_Dad_."

"So tell me, Tazaki-buchou, is my son as stubborn for you as he is at home? When I was captain--"

"It's _Tezuka_," Echizen says. "And I asked Ryuuzaki-sensai and she laughed and said she never would have made a lazy ass like you captain."

"Eh?" Nanjiroh bellows. "Are you calling your father a liar?"

"Yes."

"Well, how's that for respect?"

"Echizen," Tezuka says quietly. "You shouldn't call your father a liar."

"But he is."

"Eh, Tazaki-buchou, the kid's right." Nanjiroh opens a beer. "I am. Want one?" He holds out the can to Yamato and the spoon flashes again, and foam fountains onto the floor and Nanjiroh hollers like a child over his spilled beer until the cousin makes him clean it up.

Tezuka sets the table. Yamato chats with Echizen's mother. Echizen and his father trade insults. The cat laps at the beery spot on the floor. Around all this somehow the cousin, Nanako, gets dinner on the table, and it smells wonderful but Tezuka's stomach is tight and he feels lost, a tourist in the foreign country that is Echizen's house.

Yamato is a seasoned traveller. He chats easily with everyone, adapts to the local culture, adapts to Nanjiroh and his boasting and his shocking lies. He's not even _good_ at lying, and Tezuka is almost more offended by the fact that he's not trying his best. Yamato doesn't seem to mind.

"Echizen-san, Ryoma-kun is an excellent tennis player."

"He doesn't suck too badly," Nanjiroh says, more interested in his dinner than Yamato's repeated attempts to get him to talk about his son. Echizen is pink-faced and glowering at his plate.

"He's been good for the team, from all Tezuka's told me." Yamato's not looking at Nanjiroh but Tezuka knows that only means he owns all of Yamato's attention. "He's been a pillar of--"

"Pillar of Seigaku?" Nanjiroh pauses with his chopsticks halfway to his mouth, suddenly interested. "I can believe that's still going around. That was some cheesy story I told that little squirt Tamaru when I left for America so he'd stop bawling. 'Be the Pillar of Seigaku, Tamaru!' Ahahaha!"

Echizen rounds furiously on his father, but Yamato only grins, clearly delighted. "It's a masterful story, Echizen-san, that the roots it laid down are still inspiring the team."

"Eh?" Nanjiroh puffs out his chest. "Of course it is."

"Tezuka and I are taking your son out to a movie tomorrow night, if it's all right with you." Yamato takes a bite, ignoring the startled looks both Tezuka and Echizen shoot at him.

"Why wouldn't it be all right? He can go out with his friends."

"Ah. It's more in the way of a date."

Tezuka feels a sharp kick under the table before Echizen corrects his aim, but Yamato never flinches, not even when Nanako bumps her glass. Nanjiroh just laughs, taking it as a joke (or maybe, Tezuka thinks, _wanting_ to take it as a joke).

"If only that son of mine would bring home a pair of high-school girls. And maybe another pair for me, haha!"

"Idiot," Echizen mutters, and his mother just rolls her eyes.

"I'm glad you approve," Yamato says, very seriously, and Nanjiroh's laughter deepens and he jabs his chopsticks at Yamato and challenges him to a match after dinner.

Yamato loses 6-0, but Nanjiroh is still too tickled to complain about the easy win.

* * *

Echizen's cat is called Karupin. He takes a liking to Tezuka, and turns circles in his lap, demanding more strokes, more scratches, more, more, more. Tezuka's pleased with this, as he doesn't know what else he would do, with Yamato and Echizen making out on Echizen's bed.

He tries not to look, but his eyes are swifter than his self-control, and they dart again and again to where his senpai and his kouhai lie side-by-side, hands restless, fingers twisted in shirts. Echizen is shifting as they kiss. He's flung one leg over Yamato's and it molds his jeans across his backside and Tezuka feels, perhaps unfairly, that they are ganging up on him by making out with each other. He's not sure how this logic works; he only knows that they ignite a slow burning jealousy and another heat he can't explain, doesn't want to examine because he might discover things about himself he doesn't want to know.

His eyes know, and keep sneaking glances no matter how many times he tells himself he shouldn't stare.

When Echizen's hips stop squirming aimlessly and settle into a determined rhythm, Tezuka stands up. Karupin squawks loudly but lands on his feet. "Buchou and I should go." His voice is too high.

"Mmm, Tezuka's right," Yamato says when he breaks away from Echizen (it takes a long time). When Yamato stands Tezuka can see the urgent bulge straining the front of his jeans and his mouth goes dry and he looks away.

Echizen doesn't even bother to straighten his clothing. "Are we boyfriends now?" he asks like he couldn't care in the slightest, and Yamato answers yes just as Tezuka says no. "Che. Either way you're paying for the movie."

"Of course. My treat." Yamato kisses Echizen once, with less heat but Tezuka can still see his tongue probing, pink and glistening, and turns away, turns the knob.

"Buchou, wait." Echizen catches his arm, presses against him and Tezuka feels the sudden raw reality of another boy's erection against his hip. He lets Echizen kiss him, open mouthed, feels their tongues touch and can't stop thinking about Echizen kissing Yamato. "Thank you for coming," Echizen says, as though he'd invited them, and walks them down the stairs -- mainly, Tezuka feels, to bodyguard them from Nanjiroh.

They're silent for the walk to the bus stop, silent on the ride. Tezuka is dizzy and raw and feels his boundaries warping and stretching each day this, whatever 'this' is, continues. Yamato gets off the bus with him, walks him to his house unnecessarily. At the door he backs Tezuka into the shadows and kisses him against the wall. He tastes like Echizen.

"The in-between years are the worst, aren't they?" Yamato presses his forehead to Tezuka's. "I missed you."

Tezuka closes his eyes and remembers the curious loneliness of his second year of junior high, with Yamato gone and his arm uncooperative and Echizen winning tournaments in California instead of sweeping through Tezuka's life and his team like a sulky cocky whirlwind. Next year Yamato will be at university and Echizen will be at junior high and Tezuka will be alone again.

"Was it hard for you?" he asks, curious. "After Hirukawa-buchou graduated?" He'd met Yamato's captain just once, and can only recall bleached blond hair and cheeriness that now reminds him of Sengoku.

"Not as much." Yamato kisses him again, lightly, leans close, whispers. "I wasn't in love with my captain."

* * *

Yamato sits between them at the movie and it feels both terribly wrong and terribly right. Tezuka doesn't know why it's so hard to give control of this to Yamato, but it is.

The movie is terrible because Yamato let Echizen choose. It's an American comedy and even with the subtitles the jokes go over Tezuka's head. Echizen laughs at the right places and eats all the popcorn, and he tastes of butter and salt when Tezuka kisses him at the bus stop, Yamato's arm draped over them both.

* * *

Unexpectedly it's Fudomine that takes the junior division nationals, invincible with seven of their regulars veterans. They knock Seigaku out in the semifinals, and then go on to scrape a bloody win from Kirihara's Rikkai Dai. Echizen stomps around in a foul mood muttering to himself in a fine impression of Ibu Shinji; his match against Kamio was Seigaku's only win. His mood is slightly improved when Rikkai defeats Hyotei in the senior semifinals, and Tezuka can only guess that this is because it means he and Atobe will not play each other this year.

"Stupid monkey king," Echizen mutters. His feet are on the back of Tezuka's chair, one shoelace tickling Tezuka's neck. He's glaring across the courts where Atobe and Kabaji are watching the final match. Their uniforms no longer match and Kabaji is nearly standing on Atobe's heels.

Sanada and a second year Tezuka doesn't know took doubles two, and Fuji and Yamato took doubles one. Yoshida lost singles three and Tezuka won singles two, and it's all down to singles one. Tezuka watches impassively, but he thinks last year's gold medal will shortly be joined by a silver. Seigaku cheers, but there is an edge of fatalism to their collective voice and Rikkai knows it and does not bother to catcall back.

Fuji leans over Echizen's leg. "At least Katori is making him work for it, ne, Tezuka? During that last rally Yukimura almost broke a sweat."

"I don't know what he's so smug about," Echizen grumbles, not even pretending to watch the game. "He _lost_ his match." Across the stadium, Atobe poses and Tezuka knows he's aware of the scrutiny. His monologue to Kabaji never pauses, and even Sanada is glaring at him. Tezuka thinks by the set of Yukimura's shoulders that he's getting annoyed. No one important is actually watching his game. Tezuka sits forward, trying to be polite, trying to tune out Fuji teasing Echizen and Yamato talking to Oishi and Yoshida trying too loudly to rouse more support from the freshmen.

Katori loses both sets -- 0-6, 2-6 -- and for the two games he took he's covered in dirt and scrapes and sweat. Yukimura looks like he just finished a light morning jog. Tezuka itches to dig out his racket. Behind him, Echizen is bored and twitchy.

"We're going out to celebrate," Yamato says after hands have been shaken and congratulations given and accepted as due tribute. "Echizen, why don't you come too?"

"Che," Echizen says. Fuji has braided his shoelaces together. He toes off his shoes and hands them to Tezuka, who spends the bus ride to the karaoke bar untangling the knot.

* * *

"We're going camping," Yamato announces the week after the seniors' Nationals end. They are at Yamato's house, and the windows are open to the late summer breeze.

"Echizen has exams," Tezuka says from behind his history textbook.

"We'll help him study."

"I have cram school."

"Bring your books."

"You have entrance exams for university."

"Preparation begins with the soul, Kunimitsu-chan."

"Don't call him that," Echizen says from where he's sprawled on the bed, playing Yamato's Playstation, and Tezuka soundly, if silently, agrees.

Yamato only slaps Echizen on the butt, earning himself a growl and a halfhearted kick. "Pack your stuff."

They take a bus, and then the train, and then another bus, and then there is a hike that earns a scowl from Echizen. He keeps up more out of pride than enthusiasm, and greets each of Yamato's lectures on the flora and fauna with skepticism. Tezuka lets their conversation flow around him and tries to leave thoughts of schoolwork back in Tokyo with his books. The mountain works its magic quickly enough, and soon even Yamato has fallen silent, and exchanges amused looks with Echizen when he thinks Tezuka can't see.

They pitch the tent in a clearing (Echizen 'supervises'), and clear a spot for a fire. They brought food, but there is a stream nearby and Tezuka is eager to fish for his dinner and Yamato and Echizen humour him. It's better than the onigiri Yamato's mother packed.

"This was a good idea, Yamato-buchou," Echizen says when they are full of fish and rice and are lying on their backs beside the fire, sticky-fingered. Echizen brought marshmallows. Tezuka had no idea what to do with them, and wishes he still didn't.

"We all need a little peace now and then." Yamato's eyes are closed and Tezuka wants to kiss him. He thinks, _I can,_ and so he does. Echizen watches, lazily cooking his marshmallows to black-crusted balls of goo. Yamato tastes like fish and sugar and char. He knows more constellations than Tezuka does.

They're all heavy-eyed from the long trip and the hike and the fresh air, and Echizen falls asleep first, sprawled next to the fire with his cap tugged low over his eyes. Yamato wakes him as Tezuka puts out the fire, and he crawls, yawning, into the tent.

Tezuka takes the middle, which is as it should be, but he has not thought this position through and it is only when Yamato has (after very solemnly kissing them each goodnight) shut off the lamp that Tezuka realizes how confined they have him, how enveloped in them he is. Echizen falls back to sleep at once, bum snugged up to Tezuka's hip, one cold foot moulded to Tezuka's calf. Yamato sleeps on his stomach. His head is on Tezuka's shoulder.

It's loud in the tent, insects and night birds and the wind and Echizen's breathing and Tezuka feels more awake every minute that passes. Heat from their bodies seeps through Tezuka's t-shirt and track pants. Yamato exhales and scorches his collarbone; inhales and the night air rushes in, condenses to icy dampness.

He can't take any more. He peels back the blanket, slips out of the tent and walks to the edge of the clearing, and finds a tree to lean against while he pulls in deep breaths of damp night air. It's going to rain soon. His skin is on fire.

He turns to the tree, a safer simpler pillar than the two asleep in the too-small tent, but it has nothing to tell him other than the rough press of its bark against his hot cheek, the creak of its branches in the wind. There's a full potent weight between his legs that won't subside even now.

He's weak and he knows it, but he can't go back like this, can't sleep between them and not touch them or ask (beg) them to touch him. So he touches himself, softly at first but soon his track pants are at his thighs and his fist is harsh and desperate and the friction hurts but he can't stop. He curls his fingers against the bark, sticky with pungent sap; ants troop across his hand and his come patters on old dry pine needles. His breath races. He's dizzy and elated and guilty but not a bit sorry, and he suddenly realizes he's freezing. He forgot to put on shoes. He doesn't know what's wrong with him.

He tucks himself away and creeps back to the tent, shaking in earnest now. Every leaf and twig he steps on sounds like a firecracker.

They're both awake. For a moment Teuka can't breathe, can't make himself move forward, can't brave them and their new knowledge of him. It's too intimate and he's not ready.

"Buchou," Echizen says, and there's something deep and new in his voice, and Tezuka thinks _I put that there,_ and feels deeply ashamed. "Che. Close the flap and come back to bed. It's cold."

Tezuka does as he is told, and they part for him. His face burns as he hides it in the darkness against Yamato's chest. At his back Echizen trembles and presses a shaky kiss to his nape, but he's asleep again in seconds and Tezuka is surprised to find himself following.

* * *

There's a sharp bite in the air and the senior club members have retired. University entrance exams consume Yamato whole; Ryuuzaki and Kaidoh have stolen Echizen away to force-feed him responsibility for next year's club. Tezuka is alone on the courts.

Alone and thinking about sex and love and _them_ as he hits the ball over and over, too fast to see. He strikes on instinct. He can hear Echizen's voice in his ear. _Tennis is the easy part._ He thinks about Yamato's story about the berries and wonders how Yamato knew it would be Tezuka, not Echizen, they would all be waiting for. A train passing overhead drowns the steady _ch-thok, ch-thok, ch-thok_ of the ball.

_Tennis is the easy part._

He finds, when the train has passed and the ball has struck his palm and fallen silent, that he has no regrets and that is all that really matters. He thinks he will call Oishi and see if he wants to go to the new exhibit at the Tokyo National Museum until his boyfriends are done being busy (and in one case, grows an interest in history). When he digs his phone out of his bag he sees he's missed a text message.

**save me i dont want 2 b captain**

He texts back: **You are Seigaku's pillar.** The reply takes a long time to come, but Tezuka almost -- not quite -- smiles to see it.

**buchou stop being right. its annoying.**

Tennis _is_ the easy part, but Tezuka supposes if life were easy it wouldn't be interesting.

* * *

Spring.

It's cold and wet and snowing sakura blossoms. They're everywhere, even on the court under the trains where there is not a cherry tree in sight. Echizen stomps up to the service line muttering about the annoying freshman who bounced onto the junior high courts last week, and their match is littered with 'Kurata did this' and 'Kurata did that' as much as the court is littered with petals. Echizen won't hear a word of reason on the subject but when Tezuka gets his book from Echizen's bag the schedule for the ranking matches is on top and Kurata is in C block with Kachiro.

Later, after Echizen has fallen asleep on Tezuka's bed amidst the wreckage of two sets of homework, after Yamato has messaged his dinner order (to be smuggled into the university library) and then messaged an incomprehensible string of netspeak that Echizen refused to translate, Tezuka sits by his window and listens to the rain and Echizen's slow breathing. Yamato calls and Tezuka gets to hear the explanation of the message -- it makes him blush -- and they talk quietly while Yamato writes his paper and Echizen sleeps and Tezuka thinks he would like to hold on to this forever.

Summer to fall to winter. Everything changes, and he doesn't know where this will lead, but he knows this: spring always comes.


End file.
